CSotD: It could be worse: They could let you stay
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King Features' online offerings include a blog by the archivist that, at the moment, includes some memories, and much of the sales package, for Jeff MacNelly's "Shoe."
You should go read that, but the short version is that MacNelly, who acquired some fame in editorial cartooning circles for proving that "conservative" and "funny" were not mutually exclusive, launched the strip in 1977 and drew it for a little over 20 years. MacNelly died in 2000 at 52 of lymphoma and the strip has continued under the direction of his wife, Susie, and a team that had been doing the strip for a few years by then.
For a once-ink-stained wretch like me, the importance of the Shoe story is that the title character, P. Martin Shoemaker, was named for legendary Chapel Hills Weekly (Later "Chapel Hills Newspaper") editor and UNC journalism professor Jim "Shu" Shumaker, who had been MacNelly's boss at his first newspaper job.
Which leads to this SSDD segue:
News came yesterday of another decapitation: Gannett just ordered an across-the-chain slashing, and Joe Heller, staff cartoonist for 28 years at the Green Bay Press-Gazette, got the ax.
Alan Gardner has an exit interview with Heller here, which is actually somewhat encouraging: While Heller didn't have a specific warning, he had enough sense to be keeping his head on a swivel and he's probably going to be okay in the long run.
Which doesn't mean it was an intelligent decision, only that Joe's an intelligent guy.
The discouraging news sent me to the Internets in search of a comforting "It could be worse" story, specifically that of the reporter who, when the Houston Post suddenly closed down in 1995, was in the midst of a series in which he was bicycling across Texas and filing reports from the towns along his route.
If you have to be stuck on a bicycle in the middle of your state when your meal ticket is abruptly cut off, it's better to be working for a newspaper in Rhode Island or Connecticut than one in Texas.
That search, I knew, would center on the BONG Bulletin, one of the true delights of the early days of the Web. BONG was compiled by Charley Stough and you really, really, really have to click on that link.
BONG began as a theoretically-weekly email subscription piece, as many wonderful things did back then, and it had a rabid following among Burned Out Newspapercreatures. Working at a newspaper does not pay well, but most reporters are blessed with a taste for gallows humor and take their remuneration in the form of horror stories that can be retold over glasses of something bracing.
The BONG Bulletin was a delightful collection of treasured suffering.
I didn't find the story of the stranded Postie, but I did spend a couple of hours reading BONG Bulletins from 1999 and 2000 and laughing aloud, which is unusual enough that it gets head-tilts from the dog.
And I came across a series of stories, each provoking another from Charley's readers for the following week's bulletin, referencing the original Shu and an even greater legend, Shu's publisher, Orville Campbell, a man whose personality was so offensive that … well I'll just cut-and-paste, in the original Courier:
HOW A PUBLISHER FOUND IMMORTALITY. Mike Sharsky
<fla-@nr.infi.net> avers that at the Chapel Hill (N.C.) Newspaper,
legendary UNC-Chapel Hill journalism prof Jim Shumaker — for whom the comic
strip Shoe was named by Newspaper alum Jeff MacNelly — did a stint as the ME; sometimes engaging in titanic struggles with publisher
Orville Campbell. One of those culminated in Shumaker's hurling a typewriter at
the notoriously tyrannical Campbell, but that was before Robert's Rules of
Order came to apply at staff meetings. "This was back when Shoe was
keeping himself well lubricated," Sharsky said.
Campbell also
backed the young comedian Andy Griffith but they suffered a falling out.
"The story told in the newsroom," Sharsky said, "was that
Griffith exacted revenge in his TV show by poking cruel fun at his former
mentor's once-frequent visits to the bottle: Orville B. Campbell, newspaper
publisher and star maker, became Mayberry's Otis B. Campbell, town drunk."
**********
HOW THEY DO IT IN CAROLINA. JenN-@aol.com reminisces about
UNC-Chapel Hill journalism prof Jim Shumaker. "Shu was my favorite
professor and the honorary and only faculty adviser to us at The Daily Tar
Heel, UNC's student newspaper. When class begins, he locks his door, and too
bad for you if you're late. Any praise from him is hard-earned, although it
doesn't take too long to see the twinkle in his eye. The highest praise I ever
got was in his newswriting class. Written on the front of an 'A' paper: 'This is not altogether terrible.' I still have
it."
**********
Lee Hinnant
<leehi-@weblnk.net> attests: "Knowing many of those involved, I was
truly amused by the story about Orville Campbell and Andy Griffith. Allow me to
add this caveat:
"As a student
at UNC-Chapel Hill in the early 1980s, I heard Campbell needed a part-time
reporter. I needed beer money, so I submitted clips and a number of
photographs. Campbell showed me around his newsroom and sat me down in his
office, where he told me he liked my work and thought I could do a good job.
'When do I start?' I asked.
Campbell replied
that I wouldn't be working for him.'Why should I pay you when I can get all the
help I want for free up the street?' he said, gesturing toward the nation's
oldest public university. I told Mr. Campbell that he would get what he paid
for and that I would be better and more reliable than an unpaid intern. He said
if one person didn't work out he'd simply get another, and so forth. I had no
good argument for that, so I fortunately ended up working at the university
News Bureau at a fair wage. But I will never forget Mr. Campbell trying to
persuade me to do the same thing for nothing."
**********
SVer-@aol.com reports, "Regarding the late Orville B.Campbell Jr., tyrannical editor and publisher (the very
title makes one flinch, doesn't it?) of the the Chapel Hill Weekly (renamed the
Chapel Hill Newspaper when it went daily-except-Saturday … if you have space,
I'll regale the readers with one of many pieces of Orvillian lore:
"Orville's
little rag hosted perhaps more than its fair share of fine journalists in its
day, but Orville's nature also created some impossible situations. Orville had
a tendency toward hero worship.
"Among the heroes he worshipped was Vermont Royster, who had
retired to Chapel Hill after an illustrious career at the Wall Street Journal.
I had been a writer and editor for Orville, and when managing editor Fred
Vultee (now teaching at the University of Missouri J-school) left for greener
pastures, I succeeded him at the Desk of Dread.
"About three
months later, I had the temerity to suggest that we needed to fill the two
reporter positions that were vacant among the newsrooms putative staff of five,
so that we could bloody get some work done. Orville glared and yelled at me to
go back and sit in my office.
"A week later, he told me that a young man was moving to
Chapel Hill that fall from Indiana to study on a Vermont Royster fellowship. My
hopes began to rise.
"'I'm probably
going to hire … his wife," Orville told me, a woman with no newspaper
experience whatsoever, not even a campus newspaper, and I was supposed to hire
her into my most senior reporting slot.
"The woman flew in
from Indiana for an interview, and Orville was closeted in his office at the
appointed hour. I invited her back to mine, figuring to make best use of her
time and mine while Orville got ready. About 20 minutes later, Orville called
my office from his and berated me for talking to the woman before he did,
ordering me to send her up to his office. I obliged and ushered her in. She
stayed 5 minutes before he threw her out of his office.
"But the story
isn't over….
"He stormed
back to my office, yelled at me for a few minutes, his face turning its
accustomed magenta, then went back up front. An hour later, he called me again.
This time, he told me to wait until that evening, when the woman candidate
arrived in Indiana, call her, apologize for him and offer her the job.
"That
afternoon, I updated my resume and sent it off to several places, one of which
hired me after another month. But that evening I did as he asked. I called her,
explained that Orville sometimes had these little fits, but that it wasn't
overall a terrible place to work, and by the way, I was looking for another
job, and if she still wanted to come, we'd hire her.
"Amazingly,
she said yes. This was in July. In mid-August, she arrived; I was gone, and my
successor in the Desk of Dread dutifullly assigned her to cover a Chapel Hill
Town Council meeting. She went to the meeting, came back the next morning and
wrote a story for that afternoon's paper, then quit. I'm now an editor for The
Charlotte Observer."
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